Mark, thanks for sharing that. Had I ever looked to a copy of the book for the reference and not found the chapter, I would've assumed Borges had invented the conceit a an extra, "secret" chapter. Now I'll never make that mistake.<br>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 10:21 AM, Mark Millman <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:markjmillman@gmail.com">markjmillman@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">Dear Mr. Wynn,<br>
<div class="im"><br>On Monday 23 November 2009, you wrote:<br><br>> I've always thought the Borges=Ultan<br>> theory was tenuous. Not impossible,<br>> just not much supporting it beyond<br></div>> Utlan's blindness. . . .<br>
<br>There's also the fact that both Ultan and Borges were national<br>librarians of their respective countries.<br>
<div class="im"><br>> Okay. While Wolfe might well have been<br>> introduced to the monster "Baldanders"<br></div>> by Borges, it comes from the Renais-<br>> sance fantasy story "Simplicius Simpli-<br>
<div class="im">> cissimus".<looks over at it sitting on his<br>> shelf right> According to the story, the<br>> name means "first one thing and then<br></div>> another" because, like the wizard Talei-<br>
<div class="im">> san, it is always changing into other<br>> things. Although I can think of several<br></div>> reasons why Wolfe might have been at-<br>
<div class="im">> tracted to a "successive monster", as<br>> Borges calls it, I have no idea how this<br>> relates to Wolfe's Frankenstein.<br><br></div>I have two different editions of the Simplicissimus, both of which<br>
lack the sixth book in which, according to Borges, Baldanders appears.<br> What edition do you have, and who prepared it? I'd like to look for<br>a copy of my own.<br><br>For those list members who haven't encountered it, the Simplicissimus<br>
is a sort of German Candide set during the Thirty Years' War. The<br>sixth book, which was added late in the author's life, is, as I<br>understand it, considerably more fantastic than the novel's preceding<br>
books, although there are fantastic episodes earlier, with a<br>particularly long one falling in the fifth book. My guess is that<br>modern editors are primarily interested in the work's realistic<br>aspects and omit the sixth book as an inferior late addition. While<br>
it's not well known in the English-speaking world today (although I<br>just found an on-line version at<br><a href="http://rbsche.people.wm.edu/teaching/grimmelshausen/" target="_blank">http://rbsche.people.wm.edu/teaching/grimmelshausen/</a> and there are a<br>
couple of reasonably accurate Wikipedia articles on it and its<br>author), many German authorities consider it to be the beginning of<br>the modern German novel tradition.<br><br>> J.<br><br>Best,<br><font color="#888888"><br>
Mark Millman<br></font>
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